Exploring the Night

Taipa Village Cultural Association exclusively Presents "Nocturnal", a Photography Exhibition by Rusty Fox
by

In June, Taipa Village Cultural Association presented Nocturnal, an enigmatic photography exhibition featuring a photobook by Rusty Fox, who captures the anthropomorphic forms of plants in the city. This one-of-a-kind show explores the uncanny resemblance between sentient organisms and urban vegetation.

During Macau’s pandemic lockdown, Rusty snuck out at night and wandered around, noticing that the city’s plant life was thriving more than ever. The vividness of the plant forms and growth – and their “body language”, which to him spoke louder than words – at a time when everything else was perfectly quiet and still, inspired his project.

“I like walking around at midnight in an empty city. Without people around, I start to observe little things around me; in this project – trees and plants,” says Rusty.  “I like how they have been around and living in the city for so many years, but we are so used to them and ignore them in the daytime. I feel like they are having their own time at midnight and I am the outsider myself.”

By taking an anthropomorphic approach, Fox created portraits of trees and insect-like flowers and plants as analogous to human forms through his carefully composed close-ups, capturing the plants’ exuberance and grace as they pulsed with energy – moving, dancing and stretching, much like people in an urban environment.

“I discovered the similarities with the human body by accident. Many of the photos look like trees at first, but if you turn the image upside down you start seeing things – in this case the figure of  a human body,” Rusty explains.  “Henri Cartier-Bresson does this a lot to the pictures from his colleagues in MAGNUM PHOTOS, resulting in finding something surreal. Also, my flash isolated the background into pure darkness, and this helps my audience focus on my subject without distraction.”

Together with the exhibition, the photobook is an invitation to visitors to enter into a parallel alternative world, starting with the texture of the paper, encompassing the narrative of the imagery, and ultimately involving the entire reading experience, as if set down in a mysterious tale from a vintage novel.

“It is our honour to invite Rusty to showcase this quirky and mystical photography collection in Taipa Village,” says João Ó, Curator and President of the Executive Board at Taipa Village Cultural Association.

“Anthropomorphic figures, conveyed through the portraits of trees or insect-like flowers and plants, are Fox’s nocturnal explorations of the local flora. The tree trunks depicted have such a physical expression – even sensual at times, one might suggest – that there is a haptic stimulus created by the contrast in surface texture. In Fox’s uncanny close ups, these living figures aren’t still, they’re pulsing with energy: walking, dancing, stretching, much like people in an urban environment.”

Born in Macau, Rusty earned a master’s degree in documentary photography at the University of South Wales and a bachelor’s degree in photography at the University of East London. His works have always focused on balances and imbalances within the city, emphasising the relationships between sentient beings and objects often regarded as inanimate.

For Fox, documentary photography has no limits to the ways in which it can present its subjects. His body of work encourages viewers to ponder the oft-neglected connection between active, mobile beings and features of the world that are frequently considered static, leading us to hidden messages through his pursuit of extraordinary truths amid the apparent ordinariness of our surroundings, while allowing the images to speak for themselves.

Exhibition period : Until August 24

Opening hours : 12.00 pm £ 8.00 pm 

Address: Taipa Village Art Space, No. 16-18, Rua dos Clerigos, Taipa, Macau

Admission : Free 

Facebook
WhatsApp
Threads
X
Email

More from the author

More of this category

Featured

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Older Issues

Living and Arts Magazine

現已發售 NOW ON SALE

KNOW MORE LiVE BETTER